


Digging Two Graves

by heelbruiser



Category: South Park
Genre: College, Drug Use, Holidays, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Old Friends, Revenge, Vandalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heelbruiser/pseuds/heelbruiser
Summary: Kyle returns home for winter break from his junior year at college, and after some odd years of not speaking, Stan comes over one night and makes a rather strange request for his help in aiding him in revenge. He won't tell him why, and he doesn't particularly care; he's just glad Stan's talking to him again.





	Digging Two Graves

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently distracting myself from work on a much bigger piece, which is going to be my first chapter story. I'm trying to get the writer's block to go away by taking a small break from it, and out of that came this. It could definitely be more fleshed out, but I'm leaving it as a quick piece of flash fiction. Hope you enjoy xx

At nearly midnight on the Wednesday before Christmas, Kyle sat slumped in a massive collection of pillows and blankets in his bedroom. He was desperately trying to get a hard-start on his assigned reading for next semester, but found himself making very little progress, as he continually needed to read and re-read every paragraph, losing his focus in the technical jargon and debilitated by boredom. He didn’t want to tell his parents yet that he was thinking about switching his major from computer science to chemical engineering. On the flight home, he wondered when the best time to broach the subject was; springing it on them within the first couple days seemed too jarring, and he didn’t want it looming over the entirety of his vacation. He contemplated telling them after the New Year, or even during it, when his parents would be blitzed on champagne and the ball could be dropped both figuratively and literally.

Though he wasn’t hungry, he was in the mood to eat. Kyle had arrived home for the beginning of Hanukkah for his first year since being at school, and though it truly was a minor holiday to them, his mother went all out-with dinner, and his stomach was full to the brim with braised brisket. She was so happy to have him home that she even let Ike have a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon his father bought special for the occasion. He wondered if there were any leftover latkes—of course, they weren’t as good when they weren’t fresh out of the frying pan, but maybe if he re-heated them in the oven they’d still be tasty. The oven was too much work, though. Maybe he could microwave them. Kyle groaned as he re-read the same wall of text he’d been stuck on for nearly twenty minutes, still thinking about dinner.

He perked his ears when a hardy knock on the front door traveled all the way to his room, followed shortly by his brother announcing somewhat loudly, “Uh, yeah—Kyle’s home. He’s up in his room.”

Before Kyle could bother to shuffle off the bed, the heavy thumping of footsteps on the staircase kept him firmly planted in his makeshift blanket fort. Whoever it was had spared him the trip. He watched as Stan Marsh pushed open his slightly ajar door, and stopped just short of entering his room. “Hey, Kyle,” he said.

“Stan?”

“How’re you?”

“What’re you doing here?”

Stan took this as an invitation in, ambling aimlessly toward the middle of Kyle’s room and inspecting the carpet. He didn’t look very good; slouchy, hands stuffed in his jacket, eyes dismal and slightly glossy. Last Christmas, Stan was sporting a crew cut which Kyle thought was ill-fitting for him, and was glad to see his hair grown out again. The questions he wanted to ask bobbed uncomfortably in his throat. The way Stan refused to answer made him nervous.

He wandered toward Kyle’s desk, letting out a brief sigh as he fell into the chair. “I need your help with something,” he said.

Kyle slowly lifted upright in his bed. He folded the corner of the page he was on and tossed his textbook to the side, waiting for Stan to elaborate, which he didn’t. “Well…with what?” he asked.

“Revenge.”

Kyle recoiled, his brow pinched inward. “Revenge?”

“Yes.”

“On – on who?”

Stan subdued a small snarl as he uttered, “Cartman.”

“What for?”

“That’s not important right now, but I need your help to do it.”

Kyle scoffed. “Stan, I’m not going to help you unless you give me a reason as to why—”

“Oh, _Jesus Christ_ , Kyle,” he barked. He shot out of the chair and began to pace the floor, flailing out his arms. “I didn’t think you’d _need_ much convincing. You hate him more than anybody, you can’t just take my word and trust me that he absolutely deserves it?”

“I mean, I don’t doubt that he definitely—”

“So, you’ll help me?” Stan asked, cutting him off. There was a wild, erratic gleam in his eye like that of a cornered animal prepared to bite. Kyle thought he looked sick, or exhausted. Perhaps both. Another tiny scoff fell from his lips. “I…I-I guess?”

“Okay,” Stan said calmly. “Good. Good, thank you.”

“Why do you need my help to do it?” Kyle asked.

“Because you’re the only person I can trust right now.”

Something about the statement made Kyle’s stomach turn. There was an unwilling defeat to the tone of his admission, and it left him as sad as it did perplexed. Stan’s posture softened a bit, less cagey and a little more vulnerable. He stuffed one of his hands back into his jacket and left the other hanging at his side. “I promise he deserves it, Kyle,” he said. “You’re really gonna help me?”

“I…yeah?” he said, tipping his head. “Yeah.”

“All right, then.”

Stan cracked his neck and cleared his throat. “Meet me at my house tomorrow night at eleven,” he said, making his way to the door. “I’ll explain a little more then.”

“Okay,” Kyle said, coming out more as a question than he would have liked. “I’ll uh, I’ll be there.”

Stan allowed him the faintest hint of a smile before saying, “I know you will,” quietly closing Kyle’s bedroom door behind him. As quickly as he had barged into his house, he could hear Stan’s sneakers slapping against the staircase as he ambled down and out.

Kyle reclined into the mountain of pillows behind him and studied the wall. He made an attempt to return to his reading, but was unable to focus on much else beside the smug, confiding way Stan had said _I know you will_. Fifteen minutes later his mother peeked her head in to say goodnight before prying, “I haven’t seen you and Stanley together in some time, bubbeh.”

Kyle lied and told her that Stan wanted to possibly get lunch with him while he was in town, before he returned to school. It made her cautiously optimistic to see the two of them reunited. She reiterated her belief that although Stan was a nice boy, she thought he wasn’t a great influence on Kyle, and promptly chastised him for rolling his eyes before blowing him a kiss goodnight, demanding he give his poor brain a rest.

Bundled in his blanket, he tossed and huffed for what felt like hours. Tonight had been the longest conversation Kyle had with him in years. Shrouded by the secrecy of the dark, he tried to recall exactly _what_ had happened between them. All through elementary school, Stan was his best friend: inseparable, conjoined at the hip, brothers in arms. It began to change during middle school, he thought. Maybe it was Stan growing a bit distant and reserved after his parents’ divorce. Kyle began to take his academics more seriously than he already did, while Stan had done the opposite, opting instead to rouse his time away on the football field and waste his weekends at Bebe Stevens’ house parties. Eventually, they stopped conspiring to ensure they were in the same classes each semester; when they were, it was merely coincidence. The last time Kyle had spent the night at Stan’s house was in the summer before ninth grade, and even though it was spent laughing and shoveling pretzels into their mouths and furiously mashing buttons on controllers, even then, there was the impending sense that it would be the last time he would do so.

There wasn’t any kind of big, emotional blowout that severed their ties, nothing like that, though he was beginning to wish there was. At least then he would know why. Stan seemed to just quietly drift out of his life—a fondly-remembered piece of flotsam in the peripheral of his view. Stan stopped asking Kyle if he wanted to venture out into the woods and skip rocks at Stark’s Pond. Kyle stopped texting him at two in the morning when he couldn’t sleep, seeing if he was awake. Stan stopped asking if Kyle would be at his football games and Kyle gradually stopped going. Their friendship—a lifetime of shared history—was reduced to coerced smiles in the hallway and the occasional _Hey, dude_ , until they simply pretended not to notice the other on their way to class.

A heavy weight began to settle on his chest. Stan was a hard presence to avoid this time of year considering he lived next door, and they usually gave each other a friendly wave and not much else when Kyle returned home for Thanksgiving and during the winter break. He wondered if Stan was still going to Park County Community, and what he might have been studying. He knew he was still living at home, as did most of their classmates, who for the most part were also at community college or just now transferring to larger campuses. There seemed to be only a handful of them who went straight on to universities, and Kyle was almost certain he was the only one living out-of-state besides Token. It bothered him immensely that he knew so little of Stan now that he couldn’t even definitively say whether he was in school or not. When he realized the time was well passed two, it took every ounce of self-control not to reach for his phone, to text Stan and ask if he was awake.

**

Though he was an adult in every sense of the word, his mother still questioned him when he told her he was going out. She demanded to know where he was off to at this hour, who he was going with, what time he would be home—so he told her he was going out for a drink with Stan. It was the first lie he came up with, and admittedly, it wasn’t a very good one. She was tentative about him drinking at all, and the prospect of Stan and alcohol mixed together made her nervous with worry. It took his father’s passive encouragement between pages of current case work for him to even make it out the door. “Please be careful, Kyle,” she warbled as he headed outside, “and stay out of trouble!”

When he stepped out of his house at exactly eleven o’clock, he glanced at Stan’s house to see him emerging as well. A large duffel bag was slung over his shoulder. Kyle hoped his navy-blue sweatshirt and snow boots were the proper attire for this clandestine operation, though Stan was dressed rather casually in a flannel button-up, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the same scuffed high tops he wore all throughout high school. He trod through the small piles of melting snow between their yards—this was an uncharacteristically tepid winter for Colorado—and approached him on the porch. Stan smiled as Kyle announced somewhat dumbly, “I’m here.”

“Great,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“So, are we talking, like, ha-ha-let’s-toiler-paper-his-house revenge, or like, _Count of Monte Cristo_ revenge?”

“Whatever that second one is,” Stan said with a point. “Someone needs to teach that fat-ass that he can’t just do whatever he wants.”

“Well…what did he do? Cartman?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Can’t you just tell me now?” Kyle asked. “I mean, I feel like I’m entitled to know since I’m about to become your accomplice in what I’m assuming is definitely a crime.”

“It’s personal,” Stan said sharply. His choice of words was wounding—it was apparently too ‘personal’ for Kyle to deserve hearing. “I’ll…I’ll tell you later. Once we’re done.”

Stan hurried off the steps and toward his car parked on the curb. Kyle trod behind him, inspecting the heaving bag hanging off his back. He wondered what could be inside; it clattered dully as he tossed it into the backseat. As he was motioned toward the passenger side, he imagined Stan busting it open _Mary Poppins_ style, gleefully tossing out miscellaneous tools of destruction into Kyle’s bundled arms with no end in sight. “So, what exactly _are_ we doing?”

“There’s one thing that piece of shit loves more than anything else,” Stan mumbled as he forcefully shut his door. “That fucking Mercedes.”

“He has – Cartman has a _Mercedes_?”

“He never shuts up about it. His mom bought it for him a year ago and it’s all he wants to talk about.”

“So, I assume we’re doing something to the car?”

“We’re gonna destroy it.”

“Like, literally?”

“ _No_ , not literally, Kyle,” Stan spat. “Just, like…fuck it up is all.”

Kyle scoffed. He felt stupid for even alluding to the _The Count of Monte Cristo_. This was more along the lines of the specific brand of teen novel Kyle would pass with a sneer in the bookstore, while seeing how quickly he could predict the plot from its cover sleeve. “How _very_ original of you, Stan.”

“You got a better idea, smart-ass?”

Kyle bashfully held Stan’s glare before pulling on his seatbelt. He shook his head and folded his hands in his lap and mumbled, “Uh-uh,” pretending not to care. Neither option was particularly good, but he was even more unsure of how he would have responded had Stan truly meant the word ‘destroy,’ and how far he would be willing to follow him through. The last thing Kyle needed was a felony.

“Good,” Stan said, plunging his key into the ignition. “Because this is what we’re doing.”

Stan drove slow and methodical, his attention divided evenly between every possible window as if he were evading a squadron of police. The panic and excitement of Stan gifting a real conversation to him the night before, no matter how brief, lulled him into the delusion that revenge against a shared enemy was the perfect ice-breaker for bonding, but now that it was becoming real, Stan and his hostility and his duffel bag, he was feeling apprehensive. At this point, he would rather convince him to actually get a drink. Kyle used his silence to examine the interior of his car—it smelled faintly of fast-food grease and pine needles. Beneath his feet, he spotted a few well-handled spiral notebooks, one of which was missing its cover entirely, and examined Stan’s penmanship. It was still the same: boyish and small and bordering on illegible. He kicked around a bottle of women’s perfume that he assumed belonged to Wendy, and tangled cords of chargers among the stains of Hennessy and dried ketchup in the carpet. Every minute or so, he could feel Stan eyeball him in his peripheral, and Kyle hoped he hadn’t caught the grimace he attempted to conceal. From the rearview mirror hung a lanyard of keys, a string of wooden rosary beads, and at least six air fresheners—all of them a different color. It dawned on him that this was the first time he had ever stepped foot in Stan’s car, and there was something oddly intimate about the fact that Stan made no attempt to tidy beforehand, despite his certainty that he wouldn’t clean regardless of who he was chauffeuring around town.   

They drove mostly in silence; Stan hooked his phone up to an auxiliary cord and aimlessly selected music from a playlist. Kyle sat through a rather aggressive Fiona Apple song, and smiled when he saw Stan tapping his thumb on the steering wheel in tune to “The Stranger” by Billy Joel as it came on. The third one he didn’t recognize; it was slow, and quiet, and the layering of the piano and guitar reminded him of leaves withering on their branches when November rolled around. The man’s voice was so delicate. It was airy, a near-whisper. Careful, like he was holding broken glass. Near the second refrain, Stan gave him glance that Kyle supposed was intended to be meaningful, but by the time he realized this and looked to return it, his attention was already back on the road. He enjoyed the song, despite the lingering discomfort it left him with. He was too embarrassed to ask Stan who it was.    

**

Stan pulled in behind the row of businesses on Main Street and parked. “We need to walk the rest of the way,” he said as he cut the engine. “We can’t risk him seeing my car, he’ll know.”

“Won’t he know it’s you either way?” Kyle asked. “I mean, if what he did was so bad to warrant your vengeance.”

“Are you kidding?” Stan laughed, “Cartman thinks everyone’s out to get him. He won’t know who the fuck did it, so long as we don’t get caught.”

“If you say so.”

With Stan’s car discreetly out of sight behind the bank, they shuffled onto the sidewalk and lingered in the shadows of the storefronts. He didn’t bother to ask where they were walking to; Stan probably wouldn’t tell him. Kyle allowed himself to trail a few feet behind. Stan had this aura about him now, this impending sense that he was a bomb just waiting to go off, and Kyle was doubtful about his ability to diffuse him. He never was very good at it, anyway.

He stared at the duffel bag on Stan’s back, and hastened his pace to find if he could ascertain its contents on sound alone, which he could not. Cans of some kind? There were a few sharp clinks of what seemed to be metal, or glass. Kyle’s eyes moved from the bag and onto him. One of Stan’s sleeves had sunk down toward his wrist, and he denied himself the impulse to fix it. He wondered if maybe Stan resented him for this behavior: always making minor, insignificant adjustments. But he couldn’t help himself. Just looking at the cuff flapping against his hand was beginning to irritate him. “Your sleeve,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Your sleeve,” he repeated, pointing limply at his right hand. “It came loose.”

Without hesitation, Stan lifted his arm and offered it to Kyle. He didn’t know what would be accomplished by telling him about his uneven sleeve—he figured Stan would just ignore it, or roll it himself. But here he was, giving Kyle his arm to do it for him. It used to annoy Stan when Kyle would reach behind him in class to fold the tag of his shirt back under the collar, when he demanded Stan tie his laces together instead of just tucking them into his shoes, when he pointed out if Stan was wearing mismatched socks. He flashed Kyle a fleeting grin before giving his wrist a small shake, requesting he be tended to.

As he folded the cloth, Kyle took a second to admire the way his fingertips brushed against him. Stan was swarthy like his father, olive-skinned with fine, dusky hair all along his arm. Whereas most of their classmates were sill teetering on the brink, doughy and under-baked and smooth like milk, Stan begun his distressing voyage into puberty shortly after his eleventh birthday; his mother assured him that he was just an early bloomer, that he had nothing to worry about, that he would like the way he looked when he was older and on the other end of adolescence. It only seemed to make him more self-conscious. He had once requested Kyle’s help in shaving his arms, legs, and stomach, and the two of them spent their entire afternoon in the upstairs bathroom—ignoring his sister, Shelly, and her many commands for Stan to get out—wondering which direction they were supposed to shave the hair, why he even grew so much to begin with, and why girls put up with such an activity when, in both their humble opinions, “this shit fucking sucks, dude.” A rather fearsome bang on the door startled Kyle as he traversed Stan’s bony knee with the razor, and he ended up nicking him pretty good. He gently wiped at the wound with the heel of his hand—blood, shaving cream, scraps of hair and all, before deciding maybe it was best to stop. He wondered if Stan still had the scar.

Kyle patted the perfectly cuffed sleeve into the crook of his elbow and let his arm fall back to his side. Stan inspected his work, and nodded in approval. “Thanks,” he said.

“So…you still in school?” Kyle asked. Now seemed as good a time as any to open the gateway toward polite conversation. He mustered the nerve to look at Stan’s face, and saw him roll his eyes. “What?”

Stan smirked, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Yeah, I’m still in school. I think I’m gonna transfer to State in Fort Collins when spring’s over.”

“What’re you thinking of majoring in?”

Stan’s brisk pace came to a halt. It took Kyle by surprise, and he only stopped once he was a foot or two ahead by himself. Stan had a dubious expression on his face. “You can’t laugh,” he said, anxiously adjusting the strap on his shoulder.

“Why would I laugh?” Kyle asked. Stan looked so small to him in the light, despite being several inches taller—like he was ten again, in that silly puffball hat and slightly-too-big bomber jacket.

Stan grumbled. “’Cos it’s stupid.”

“I promise I won’t laugh.”

Stan kicked a pebble with the toe of his shoe as they began walking again. “I’ve, uh…been studying photography, y’know, for the past couple semesters,” he mumbled with a hint of resignation. His hands were shoved into his pockets. “I really like it, I think it’s what I wanna do.”

“That’s not stupid, Stan,” Kyle said. He looked like he was waiting for the joke, waiting for Kyle to laugh like he promised he wouldn’t, which he didn’t. Stan unfortunately seemed to require validation that his dreams, of all things, were not ‘stupid.’ “It’s pretty cool,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah, dude. Do you like, actually go out and shoot stuff?”

“Some things, yeah. I mean, nothing around here, uh, but I like to drive out on the 385 – there’s a lot of really cool abandoned farmhouses and shit out there. I like sneaking in and taking pictures of what’s inside.”

“You ever find anything good?”

“Actually, yeah,” he chirped, “one time I found this really old gramophone, y’know, the ones you wind-up and shit?” He slunk his hands out of his pockets to imitate the motion of cranking the handle, and Kyle could only think to describe it as adorable. “It still had a bunch of records with it so I dusted it off to try it. There was one of uh, Billie Holiday—you know her, right? The jazz singer?”

“Yeah, I know who Billie Holiday is.”

“Yeah, so, I found this record of her and put that on and played it. I couldn’t believe it still worked.”

“That’s awesome, dude.”

“Yeah, right? Like, even though it sounded so old and a little warbled, it was still really pretty. It was super weird letting it play when I went through the rest of the house.”

“Do you move anything around before you photograph it? Like, uh, composition-wise, or whatever?”

“Nah, I mostly like to keep it as the people left it. I try not to touch too much.”

He tried to imagine Stan pulling off the highway and carefully crawling through a decrepit window, tangling himself in cobwebs and dust, toeing cautiously in the life and memories of a stranger. Camera in hand—around his neck?—he would gently touch neglected countertops, faded novels on a bookshelf, askew family portraits. He would pick up a Billie Holiday record and play it. Stan would photograph the forgotten remains of other people, wondering to himself where these people were now, if they were still alive, if they liked living here. Maybe he would hang around for a few hours with the knowledge that no one gave enough of a shit to condemn or bulldoze it, so he could lounge on the floor and scroll through the pictures he captured. Does he delete them if he doesn’t think they’re good? Does he save them all? Does he show anyone?

Kyle cleared his throat. “If you, uh, ever wanted show any to someone,” he offered, “I’d love to see them.”

Stan straightened his back and hummed, mild and indecisive. “Maybe.”

They spent the rest of their walk in relaxed silence, their shoulders occasionally brushing against the other.

**

Once they crossed into the parking lot of the movie theater, Stan held his arm out to Kyle’s chest. “There,” he said, pointing to a silver Mercedes. “There’s his car.”

“Why does he park all the way back here? You’d think he’d park up front so he doesn’t have to walk very far.”

“He thinks everyone’s so goddamn jealous of him, that his car is safer or something if he tries to keep it out of sight,” Stan said with a snide grin. “His mistake.”

Kyle scanned the parking lot. There were only a handful of vehicles; no one typically came to see movies this late at night, but the theater was open until midnight. “Why’s he here?” he asked.

“He works here.”

“Cartman has a job?”

“His mom told him she was only going to pay for his school if he got a one,” Stan said, hiking the duffel bag on his shoulder. He laughed when he saw Kyle raise his brow in surprise. “Don’t be too impressed,” he said, “he only works two days out of the week.”

“I was more impressed that his mom actually gave him an ultimatum. Or that he listened to it.”

Stan darted his eyes left and right, making sure they were alone. He gave Kyle a rough pat on the back as he guided him toward the car. “What does he do?” he asked.

“I think he cleans the theaters after everyone leaves, or something. Y’know, sweeping popcorn off the floor and shit.”

“I just can’t imagine Cartman doing…like. Actual work.”

Stan took a knee in front of the driver’s side, easing the bag onto the ground and rooting around. “’Kay, phase one,” he said, “the interior.”

“Stan, we’re not breaking in to the car if that’s what—”

“No need,” he said, waving his hand. He retrieved a small felt pencil case and pulled something from inside. “I have the valet key.”

“Valet key?”

“It’s a, uh, key that a lotta high-end cars have,” he explained. Stan held it in front of Kyle before sticking it in the lock. “It can unlock the doors and start the car but doesn’t let you get into the glove box or trunk. So rich assholes can feel better about leaving their cars with a valet.”

When Stan carefully pulled open the door, Kyle peered inside. Cartman was always a slob; half-eaten chicken bones and sticky rings of Mountain Dew stains were regular staples of his bedroom growing up. But the car was impeccable. Save for a few minor scuffs of dirt, the interior was quite pristine, and it retained that nauseating new-car smell. “How’d you get that?” he asked, turning to Stan.

“I took it out of his glovebox last week when he stopped to get gas.”

“Get…gas?” he repeated. “Like, were you hanging out with him?”

“I mean. Yeah.”

Kyle blinked at him in disbelief. “You still hang out with him?”

Stan shrugged his shoulders, heaving the duffel bag off the ground as he motioned for Kyle to climb in. “Sometimes, yeah,” he said. “Why?”

Kyle waited for Stan to follow him into the backseat before finishing his thought. “No, nothing, just,” he mumbled, “I didn’t know you were still friends with him.”

Stan glared as he jostled the bag between them. “I’m not.”

“Well, why do you still hang out with him?”

“I don’t _know_ , Kyle,” he hissed. “Because I – I know him, y’know.”

Stan held his glare for only a few moments more, flitting through the contents on the floor and muttering, “ _Goddamn_ ,” under his breath. Kyle felt his stomach plummet to his shoes. Of all the people in the world that Stan would rather spend time with, Eric Cartman would have been at the bottom of the list. Or, so he thought. He wondered what the two of them could possibly talk about, what they could even still have in common. It used to make Kyle ill with jealousy when he was sick and holed up in his room as a child: thinking of Stan and Cartman going to the movies or the park, playing video games, just the two of them. He wanted to think it was impossible for Stan to have fun with anyone who wasn’t Kyle.

“You might wanna cover your nose,” Stan said. “It’s gonna smell.”

“What, you gonna stick a dead fish or something beneath the seat?”

“Better than that.”

“What?”

“Fish _sauce_.”

Stan twisted the cap off a glass bottle and shoved it below Kyle’s nose, forcing him to breath in the unfortunately pungent aroma. It felt like the smell was clawing its way into his skin, preparing to settle in nice and cozy for the rest of his life, and it immediately made him want to scour himself with soap. He grimaced and shoved it away. “Ugh, goddamn, dude,” Kyle groaned. “That’s…vile.”

“It’s pretty bad, right?”

“That smell won’t ever go away once it’s in.”

“That’s the idea,” he smiled.

Kyle tugged the collar of his shirt over his face and watched as Stan poured a liberal amount of the dark sewage beneath the seats and into the carpet, going over the same spot once, twice, three times. He reserved just enough in the bottle to coat the foot of the driver’s seat. He lifted the floor mat and dunked its remains with a flourish before falling back. He laughed as Kyle groaned, his nose crinkling in disgust.

The smell quickly proved overwhelming, and Stan pushed the door behind him open, hoping to dissipate the stench with the crisp air outside. It helped, but not by much. “’Kay, now that that’s out of the way,” he said, trailing off. He dug with urgency, and Kyle was terrified to find out just what else he had in store.

Stan slinked a boxcutter from out of the bag. A faint grin flashed across his face as he pushed forward the blade, and Kyle dove for his hand before it reached the leather. “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

“What do you mean, ‘what am I doing?’”

“Stan,” he said, incredulous. He was beginning to question how he’d been roped into this in the first place. “It’s one thing to dump a bunch of fish sauce in his car, it’s another to slice open his leather seats with a boxcutter!”

“What did you think I meant by ‘destroy’, Kyle?”

“What the fuck did he do to you, anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter what he did, Kyle!”

“Yeah, Stan, it does! Now just, fucking tell me what—”

“He _slept_ with Wendy, all right?!”

The ferocity in Stan’s voice caused Kyle to lose his grip on his wrist, and he doubled back in shock. He was certain he had just heard that sentence wrong. Stan’s hand tremored, eyes wide with rage, nostrils flaring. Having known him all his life, Kyle had certainly seen him angry before—furious even, a handful of times. This was anger of an entirely different caliber; Stan used to be so calm. A pacifist. A mediator. And here he was now, trembling with adrenaline and his fingers coiled around a boxcutter. It was a stark reminder that the Stan he grew up alongside, and so gently tried to reach out to tonight, was already gone.

With a few resilient huffs, Stan retracted the blade and slumped into the seat, tightly shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “He and Wendy…they’re – they’ve been…” He throttled his fist into the passenger headrest before burying his eyes into his forearm. “God, this is so fucking embarrassing.”

Kyle was sincerely dumbstruck. There wasn’t a single combination of words that seemed to make sense in his head, and he thought he might be having an aneurysm, which only seemed a fitting compliment to this confusing night. Surely, Stan was lying to him. It was incomputable. Unimaginable. There was no reality in which Wendy Testaburger would let Cartman breathe in her general direction, much less willingly let him have sex with her. “Wha…h-how, what?”

Kyle could see Stan gritting his teeth. He refused to make eye contact, staring so intently into the lush upholstery that he feared Stan would sear a hole in it. Kyle very tender touched his hand, afraid that even the simplest move would cause him to crumble. “Stan, I – and don’t take this the wrong way – but I really think that, uh, that your source may be wrong about this.”

“My goddamn _source,_ ” Stan said pointedly, “ _is_ Wendy, Kyle.”

“She told you?”

Stan sighed, and pushed his hair off his forehead. “…I went through her phone.”

“Dude.”

“I know, I know, that’s psycho shit, I know.” Stan’s head dropped back into his hands, and he swiped his fingers across his eyes. Kyle couldn’t tell whether he was crying.

“I just—I’ve been suspicious for a while now that something was going on with her, ‘cos when I drive up to see her on the weekends she’s always talking about this guy named Anthony that she’s friends with in Aurora, I thought maybe she was…I saw a bunch of texts with someone just named ‘X’ in her phone, about how they can’t keep doing this and meeting up one last time.”

He gazed helplessly up at Kyle—so defenseless and exposed that he needed to resist the temptation to pet his hair and hold his hand. Stan’s eyes drifted, focused on nothing. “I found out that was fucking Cartman,” he gloomed. "And everyone knew."

Kyle swallowed the scratchy lump in his throat. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Stan hardened his posture. “If you throw up, do it in the front seat.”

Kyle wasn’t _actually_ going to be sick, though, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to be. He needed a second to catch a breath that wasn’t bogged in the scent of fish sauce. Wendy never struck him as the type of person to be unfaithful—rather, she appeared loyal to a fault. He used to think she was the kind of girl who would stand faithfully by her lover’s side no matter what. Why else would she run back to Stan all those years if she wasn’t? Was Stan that bad a boyfriend? Was it even about him?

“I mean, what is so wrong with me that she has to run to _fucking_ Cartman? Am I that ugly that she’d rather that fat piece of shit climb on top of her?”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “You’re not ugly, Stan.”

“Whatever,” he scowled. “Fuck both of ‘em. But fuck Cartman the most.”

“I still don’t think this is the right way to handle it, dude. It’s not gonna magically make you feel better.”

“Kyle, you’re honestly gonna sit here and tell me that you’ve never thought of doing something like this to him?” Stan gaped, shaking his head. “Never?”

Kyle sat quietly for a moment. Sure, yeah, when he was younger, maybe he’d dreamt once or twice of pummeling Cartman into the dirt, or pulling out all his teeth one by one, or setting his house on fire. But he was a child, then.

“Because we both know that’s bullshit,” he uttered. “All the times he’s humiliated you, belittled you, ripped on you for being Jewish—never? Not once?”

Kyle glowered as the memories of Cartman’s torment came storming back to him. He and Stan seemed to be the glue that held the fabric of their group together, and after their unspoken parting of ways, Cartman drifted toward the likes of Butters, imposing friendship on him without much choice. Though, it never stopped him from globbing onto Stan when someone would invariably inquire why he no longer hung out with Kyle. Cartman loved declaring himself Stan’s _real_ best friend, if only out of spite. Kenny became a stateless entity all together, bouncing seamlessly from clique to clique and blending into the background; it always seemed to be where he was most comfortable. Every now and then he threw Kyle a bone in the form of off-campus lunch or a movie on the weekend, though he also seemed to prefer the company of Stan, who shared his penchant for getting high in the school parking lot between passing periods. But Cartman remained obsessed with him all the while, and without Stan to temper the edges, his harassment only became more aggressive, more intolerable. He felt a stinging heat radiating at the back of his neck.

“You got another one of those in there?” he asked.

Stan smiled devilishly. “Of course, I do.”

**

Kyle lost track of the time as he gave in to the thrill of slicing the beautiful leather upholstery with Stan, shredding the inside cushioning for good measure. It was frightening to him just how much he was enjoying himself. He thought of his mother telling him Stan was a bad influence; she was right, apparently. Stan personally took care of the front seat. Each rip of his knife was calculated and deep, thrusting into the fabric as if it were Cartman himself. They smeared the steering wheel, windows, and handles with Vaseline; Stan had even been so thoughtful as to bring gloves along.

Once they had adequately ruined the inside, they hopped out to move onto ‘phase two,’ as Stan called it. He hurriedly jostled a can of spray paint and tossed it to Kyle. His conscience seemed to come and go through this operation; suddenly, spray paint seemed like too much. He let Stan go at the side of the car before he was wrestled into joining in himself. Though it was juvenile—and illegal—there was a kind of poetic justice to painting a dick on the door of Cartman’s car. This was his singular moment of movie-like mischief. He promised himself to never do something like this again, so he needed to make this one count. Stan sloppily wrote ‘HOPE IT WAS WORTH IT’ on the hood. It felt a little cliché and obvious to Kyle, but he figured Stan had earned it.

They were halfway through saran-wrapping the Mercedes when a portly figure emerged from the exit doors.

“HEY, WHAT THE FUCK!”

Stan’s eyes widened, muttering, “ _Shit_ , get down!” as he forcefully took Kyle by the neck. He was pulled into Stan’s side as they scrambled, ducking toward the bushes, instructing that Kyle keep his head low, certain that his mess of red hair was plenty recognizable if he got close enough. Kyle could only faintly hear Cartman’s shoes scuffing against the pavement over his heartbeat thrashing in his ears—though, he could tell he was only doing a sort-of half jog. Not even the prospect of his precious car being vandalized was incentive enough to make Cartman run.

“OH, FUCKING—GODDAMMIT, WHAT THE FUCK!”

Stan paused once they were concealed in the thicket of shrubbery, peering through the leaves to admire the destruction they had wrought. A sinfully decadent smile crept to his face. Kyle tugged at his arm; pinpricks of adrenaline crackled through his hands and feet, and he was in no mood to get caught because Stan felt like gloating. “Dude, c’mon! Let’s go!”

“In a second,” Stan hushed. Kyle crouched, ready to sprint, as Stan cozily settled in to witness the oncoming implosion in the parking lot. It was unsettling to Kyle just how badly Stan wanted to see it—or rather, it was unsettling just how badly _he_ wanted to see it, too. After debating with his better judgement for only a moment, he huddled in next to him and peered over his hands that parted the twigs.

Cartman stopped to inspect his Mercedes; he continued to scream as he furiously tore at the saran wrap-covered back half, kicking the roll at his feet and sending it flying across the blacktop, seething with rage as he was unable to tear it. His voice cracked and wavered once he assessed the spray paint. In a vain attempt to wipe it away, he tore off his work polo and bunched it in his hand, swiping feverishly at the crude visage of penises in vary shapes and sizes. He yelled, “AW, C’MON, WHAT THE FUCK!” as he glanced into the window and threw down his shirt in defeat. It sounded like he was just on the verge of tears. In all the years he’d known him, Cartman had never once looked so pathetic: sweaty from menial labor, greasy with butter, his bare, paunchy stomach pressed up against the car door. Kyle knew that even Cartman didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. Well, maybe he did, but not from him. It was a kind of cruelty that Kyle never once thought himself—or Stan, for that matter—capable of. But something felt very right as he observed the utter annihilation of Cartman’s ego with Stan leaning against him, concealing his laughter into Kyle’s shoulder.

The feeling quickly fled once Cartman glanced into the bushes, the whites of their eyes betrayed by the lit-up marquee. He charged toward them like a raging bull.  

“WHO THE FUCK…HEY! _HEY!_ ”

“ _Shit_ ,” Stan mumbled, twisting on his heel as he took Kyle’s hand, “go, go!”

They darted into the street and avoided the circles of streetlights, Kyle edging just ahead of Stan with his head cast down. He was suddenly grateful that he listened to his mother when she prodded him to join the track team in ninth grade, as if she possessed the omniscience that this particular activity would serve him well in the future. The phantom weight of a baton tingled in his hand. When he swerved onto the sidewalk and peered over his shoulder, he no longer saw Stan right behind him. Cartman could be heard, audibly out-of-breath, shouting, “ _Fuckin’ Craig, is that you?!_ ” as he attempted to keep up. Though it felt like they were being chased by a wildebeest, around the time he reached the end of the block, Cartman simply ran out of steam. He collapsed onto his knees and doubled over breathlessly, scowling, “ _Fuck you, assholes, I’m callin’ the cops!_ ”

Kyle ran clear across the next two blocks. Without Stan at his side, he felt significantly more vulnerable, like an injured mouse navigating a field of predators. Any moment now, a deep voice would command him to stop and a flashlight would be shined in his eyes, and he alone would suffer the consequences, all because his childhood friend showed up when he was feeling the dangerous combination of impulsive and nostalgic. He shuddered at the thought of calling his mother from a jail cell.

Slipping between the alley of the bank, he veered to a stop and nearly crashed right into Stan’s car. He was probably safe here. Kyle allowed himself to lean against the side, folding his arms and laying his head against the cool metal. It had been a while since he ran like that. He was feeling pretty winded himself.

He yelped when he felt a hard hand on his back. A cold sweat trickled across his forehead as Stan swiftly came into view, panting erratically. “Hey,” he said sweetly.

Kyle tossed a loose jab to his arm, glaring. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Stan sneered playfully, “What—d’ya think I was a cop?”

Kyle waved him away, yanking on the locked door handle as Stan coolly ambled toward the driver’s side. He felt his breath returning to him slowly as he slunk into the seat, watching Stan toss the bag of evidence into the backseat and pensively turn the key. Once he pulled out from behind the building, he drove slow and steady with his headlights switched off. Kyle fidgeted in his seat; Cartman’s threat of the police was buzzing in his head, and the last thing he wanted was to get pulled over and discovered because Stan was driving in the dark. “Do you think he already called the police?” Kyle asked.

“Who, Cartman?”

“ _Yeah_ , Cartman, who the fuck else?”

Stan shrugged his shoulders. “Probably,” he said. “Even if he did, Barbrady’s not gonna be out here for at least another half-hour.”

Kyle nervously twiddled with his fingers. “We shouldn’t have left the saran wrap,” he said.

“Well, it’s not exactly like we could have taken it with us.”

“Can’t they like, get our prints or whatever?”

Stan cackled, gently touching his forehead to the steering wheel as he came to a jagged stop at the light. Kyle felt his cheeks burning brightly; he didn’t think it was that dumb a question. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption! Maybe he was being a bit paranoid, sure, but one of them should be thinking of these things, and it obviously wasn’t going to be Stan.

Stan lazily lifted his head and gave him a mawkish grin, crooning Kyle’s name as he laid a hand on his knee. It stirred something in the pit of his stomach—the dual desire to hug and punch him.

“They’re not going to look for _fingerprints_ , dude,” Stan said. “Christ, here’s what’s gonna happen—he’s gonna file a police report, which they’ll never follow up on, then he’s gonna file an insurance claim, and that’ll be it. His car’ll be fine in, like, a week.”

He gave his thigh a soft pat as he pressed his foot back on the gas. “Don’t worry so much. I wouldn’t have dragged you into this if it was _that_ much of a risk, dude.”

“Fuck,” Kyle huffed. “That was close.”

“Yeah, I didn’t anticipate that,” Stan said as he scratched his cheek, “uh, him getting off early, or whatever, y’know. He usually doesn’t leave until almost one.”

Kyle melted into his seat, secretly glad the night was nearing over. Stan kept the radio off but hummed the tune of the song he heard earlier, tapping his fingers to the rhythm against the steering wheel. They drifted through the empty streets without talking. Every few minutes, they would look at each out of the corner of their eyes, and quietly laugh together.

**

“All right, phase three,” Stan said as he pulled up to his house. He haphazardly flung his unbuckled belt over his shoulder as he prodded his arm.

Kyle felt himself jolt out of the nap he almost fell into, sputtering, “Phase—phase three?”

“Mhm, c’mon.”

Stan crawled out of the front seat and grabbed the duffel bag, ambling toward back of the car. Kyle stayed put in his seat when he felt a buzz in his pocket. He pulled out his phone to see a text from his little brother.

_madre wants 2 know when ur comin home_

Kyle looked up from his phone into the rearview mirror, watching what little sliver of Stan he could see as he adjusted something in the trunk.

_Tell her I’m next door and staying at Stan’s_

_u 2 havin a sleepover?? that’s p gay_

_It is not. Don’t be homophobic. Go to sleep._

_not bein homophobic..rlly think he might be gay_

_he gave me a hug at the door yesterday_

_like??_

_ol stanleys after that kosher diccc_

_GO TO SLEEP IKE._

Kyle lifted out of the car with a groan, choosing to ignore the line of eggplant and sweat-drop emojis Ike sent him. When he stood upright, Stan smiled at him as he planted the lid shut.

Stan unlocked his front door, flicking on the light to find his father sitting in his boxers with a beer precariously angled between his legs. “Hey, dad,” he said.

“Stan—oh, uh, hey Kyle,” Randy greeted, tossing his chin. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah, it’s uh, been a while.”

“How’re you? You liking—”

“Dad,” Stan interrupted, “we’re kind of in the middle of something.”

“Oh, okay,” Randy said, reaching for the remote. “You guys are welcome to grab a beer and watch SportsCenter with me.”

“Nah, we’re good.”

Stan nudged Kyle toward the stairs and up into Shelly’s room. As kids, they were never allowed there; they’d tried to sneak in once to retrieve Stan’s iPod after she stole it, but when she caught them, she pummeled their heads together and flung them into the hallway with the threat that she would kill them if they ever attempted such again. Walking through the door still made him shudder, as if Shelly would be waiting for him right around the corner with a clenched fist for each of them. Stan walked toward the window and hoisted it open, motioning Kyle forward. “C’mon,” he said.

“Wait, where’re we going now?”

“Nowhere,” Stan said. “Just on the roof.”

“You can make it onto the roof from there?”

“Yeah,” he grinned, “her window is close enough to the drop down that I can climb on.”

Stan went through first; he heaved himself up with relative ease, giving Kyle the impression that this was something he must do quite a lot. He looked out the window to see Stan beckoning him forward. His eyes immediately turned to the ground. It was sixteen feet—maybe eighteen—if he fell. He’d fallen off his own roof before, and was not keen on the prospect of doing it again and waking in the hospital. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, hang out in your room, or whatever?” he asked.

“Don’t be a baby, Kyle.”

With a dramatic sigh, he skeptically perched through the window. Stan calmly coaxed him out, promising him that it wasn’t as big a gap as it looked and that he could make it, and when he shakily stretched his leg toward Stan, he clasped his hands around Kyle’s arm and cooed, “Don’t worry, I got you,” and helped pull him up.

They sat on the roof with their feet planted on the weathered tiles. It was the largest view Kyle ever had of their neighborhood; he could identify each of his former classmate’s houses by their dying lawns and gaudy façades, whether they had gardens full of flowers or tangled weeds near the curb. Long abandoned swing-sets and sandboxes. Rusty bicycles. Every window was empty and black save for a few sporadic bedrooms illuminated by bedside lamps. Thin, feathered clouds hung in the sky, stealing the light of the moon and stars and carrying them elsewhere and bringing about a chill wintery breeze. Everything looked so pretty from up here.

Kyle turned to see Stan fiddling with a metal tin in his lap, and as he leaned to inspect what he was hiding, Stan proudly held up a decrepit-looking joint, pinching it delicately between his fingers. “I’m, uh, not great at rolling them myself,” he said with a laugh, inspecting his handiwork, “but I think it’ll hold.”

“Is that weed?”

“No, Kyle, it’s _meth_ —yeah, it’s weed.”

Kyle rolled his eyes as Stan nudged their feet. He watched him double-check the paper, giving it a quick swipe with the tip of his tongue to ensure it was secure. After deeming it acceptable, he limply extended his wrist to Kyle. “You want the first hit?”

“Ah, I actually don’t really—”

“Aw, c’mon, dude,” Stan lovingly pleaded, bumping his shoulder to Kyle’s. “We never got to do this together. Indulge me.”

Kyle examined the joint. He’d only smoked pot twice, and wasn’t a fan on either occasion. There seemed to be so much hype around what he ultimately never quite experienced. What if the smell of it burrowed into his jacket and his mother sensed it when he returned in the morning? What if made him lose his balance and he ended up careening off the roof, landing directly on his head and becoming paralyzed, or worse, dead? What if it secretly really _was_ meth? He peered up to see Stan smiling at him. It was always his most embarrassing weakness; Stan could talk someone out of their own wallet, so long as he smiled at them. Kyle unwrapped his arms from around his knees and took the joint, holding it between his lips as Stan reached over to light it for him, blocking the wind with his hand. He’d done worse things tonight.

Kyle inhaled and resisted the urge to immediately begin coughing, not wanting to appear inexperienced while he passed it back. He exhaled as steadily as he could. Whatever it was that he had just absorbed into his lungs, it was much stronger than anything he’d smoked before; it kicked like a mule in his throat. He turned his head to observe the way Stan pulled in, long and hard as if it were his profession, puffing out his chest and holding it for what seemed like an inordinately long time before letting the withered smoke escape. He sighed happily and closed his eyes. “Who’d you first smoke pot with?” Stan asked after a brief silence.

“At some party, my freshman year,” Kyle said. He recalled it vividly—being dragged to a too-small party with too few people by his roommate who quickly ditched him about twenty minutes in. A girl with a septum piercing and a tattoo of a pinup model on her upper arm befriended him on the couch and encouraged him to loosen up. Truthfully he couldn’t tell whether it was the weed—which hadn’t been sufficiently broken down—that was bad, or his suspicion that it was actually rolled in a fast-food receipt, but he didn’t get high. Just irritated. Later, he suffered through an excruciatingly dull conversation with a self-professed “reformed ex-skinhead” who became visibly uncomfortable when Kyle informed him that he was, indeed, Jewish, though he spent the greater part of the night gushing all about his ‘dark-wave noise band,’ and how Kyle would probably like them and should come to one of their shows, which he replied to by saying he might and obviously never did. He left the party without his roommate and a massive headache.

“It sucked—the whole night did, y’know,” Kyle mumbled. He accepted the joint back from Stan before asking, “Who did you do it with?”

Stan sighed happily. “My fuckin’ dad.”

The thought of Randy sparking up a spliff with Stan was too much for Kyle mid-toke, and he only managed to sputter, “W-Wha?” before he began to cough and convulse, smoke bursting out of him like chimney. Between his gasps for air, he watched Stan howl with laughter: he fell onto his back and draped his hands over his eyes, cackling and wheezing breathlessly with heaving shoulders. It took Kyle about thirty seconds of painful hacking before he could speak. Stan blinked away the water in his eyes while he sat up and retrieved the weed from Kyle. “Your _dad?!_ ” he cried.

“He was trying to bond with me,” Stan chuckled, shaking his head. “I was fifteen, he took me to a Van Halen reunion concert and pulled it out of the glove box when we got there. We smoked it in the parking lot.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Well, duh. But anyone who’s at a Van Halen concert is, like, definitely stoned.”

He took another drag and blew the cloud over his shoulder, staring down at his feet with a light smile. “It was nice—I mean, it was ditch weed, but it was nice. Just not how I wanted it to happen.”

“What do you mean?” Kyle asked.

Stan shuffled his feet around the shingles, trying to temper the frown in the corner of his mouth. He hunched as he let out a breath. “I don’t know,” he muttered. His finger flickered against each other, lost in thought. “I just…always thought that was something me and you were gonna do together.” Stan quietly stared off into the landscape, his gaze meticulous and slow as it carried from rooftop to rooftop. He nibbled at his lip. Wisps of wind fluttered through his hair, and he smoothed his bangs to the top of his head, falling back onto his forehead soon after. “There’s so much shit that I thought you and I were gonna do for the first time.”

Kyle exhaled deeply. He understood perfectly what he meant. When he was little—when Stan was still his ‘super best friend’—he imagined the two of them hitting every memorable milestone together: first beer, first job, first apartment. In his imagination, Stan was always stitched to his hip, and more often than not he was the one leading the way. It filled him with insufferable remorse, all those moments they would never be able to recount with only each other. Why did he let Stan drift away from him? It wasn’t like it would have been all that difficult to weasel back into his life; he lived less than ten feet away, for chrissake. Their bedroom windows were just across from each other. If Stan left his curtains open, sometimes he could catch a glance of him reading a comic book, strumming his guitar, nervously kissing Wendy. Sometimes he was just sitting at the foot of his bed, staring at the wall. Sometimes Stan looked back.   

Kyle stared at Stan’s hands; he was fiddling with his phone, scrolling through a rather long list of music. His finger flicked quickly across the glass before he backtracked, having overshot the specific artist he was looking for. With a small hum of approval, he selected a song and delicately placed his phone in between them. It was the same pretty, melancholy tune he played in the car; Kyle decided that he didn’t want to know who it was, after all. He pined for the sting of mystery if he were ever to hear it again somewhere else. “You didn’t really need my help tonight,” he said.

“No. I guess I didn’t.”

Stan took a second puff before passing it to Kyle. “You were right, by the way,” he said.

“Right about what?”

“About it not making me feel better,” he mumbled. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would wreck Cartman’s car again in a heartbeat, but I still just feel…I don’t know. Empty, I guess.”

Kyle wilted into Stan’s shoulder. He rested his arm around his neck, giving him a gentle squeeze. They were quickly approaching the end of their joint, hurriedly taking turns nabbing a few final hits before Stan squashed it against the bottom of his shoe and let it tumble into the gutter. Though Kyle’s chest still ached from coughing, there was a pleasant tickle beneath his skin. He tried to describe the sensation to himself, but couldn’t; he thought maybe it was like a warm river running lazily through his body, but maybe it wasn’t water—maybe it was Jell-O. In that moment, life was fake. Just a dream. It only made sense that Stan would be here with him if it was.

“It’s just, I’ve been with Wendy so long,” Stan said, his voice sad and hoarse. “I never thought she would do something like this to me.”

With Stan nestled into his side, Kyle didn’t know what to say: there were a plethora of platitudes ringing in his brain, some sarcastic yet loving, others gentle and kind, but none of them were right. None of them conveyed quite what he wanted to say. He said nothing. When Stan lifted his head and gazed at him, eyebrows quirked sadly, Kyle slithered his arm off his shoulder and took his hand, wiggling their fingers together and interlocking them tightly. He was delighted to find their hands fit inside each other’s as perfectly as they ever had. He watched him smile weakly, though he could sense there was a frown hidden beneath it. “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only person I’ve ever actually known,” Stan breathed.

“I know what you mean.”

The two laid on their backs, hands still clasped together. Kyle never did quite find a replacement for Stan. He had plenty of friends, sure, but no one ever compared. At school, he found it difficult to make friends or even acquaintances; he’d already had such a high bar set for what he considered friendship. No one else would conspire to steal a kidney for him. No one else would convince an entire town to buy Hybrids because they missed him. No one else would rescue him from a cult. Stan was the only person he could simply look at and immediately understand what they were thinking, how they were feeling. No one else. For that brief moment, the feeling returned to him.

“Now,” Stan sighed with a grin, “how’m I gonna get revenge on Wendy?”

“I think her having to live with the fact that she slept with Cartman is punishment enough.”

Stan laughed, a lovely lilt of sadness and reprieve in his tone. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

They spent a long while staring into the sky, a pleasant buzz in the base of his neck, that gentle guitar bleating from the speaker. He wondered who the man wrote that song for—it sounded like it was about his best friend. Whoever he was, he probably spent nights like this, on a roof somewhere. Maybe they held hands, too.

Stan turned his head and beamed at him. “Hey, Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” he hushed. His eyes fell toward their hands, giving them a gentle hug. “I needed this.”

Kyle smiled. “Consider it my Christmas present to you.”

They laid on the roof in a sedated calm, the cool blanket of wind settling onto their bodies in the hazy midnight air. Kyle ignored the gritty tiles and dampness of leftover snow; he required only the warmth of Stan’s hand twined with his. They quietly watched the stars that could be seen, only speaking to occasionally direct the other’s attention to any particularly bright specks of light, wondering if maybe microscopic lifeforms were sitting on it and watching them back. It was a nice thought. To think, Kyle was broadcasting to every unimaginable being in the known universe that of all the places he could be right now, the best of all was here on Stan’s roof with only the two of them on it.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Stan plays in the car is "Futile Devices" by Sufjan Stevens.


End file.
